Larry, here is more coverage of HDS. Very good KJ, you are right.
Hitachi Goes Enterprise With New Storage Unit
(06/26/00, 8:29 p.m. ET) By Joseph F. Kovar , CRN
Hitachi Data Systems on Monday unveiled its latest storage array, which company officials say offers scalability to up to 37 Tbytes without affecting performance.
Hitachi (stock: HIT) Data Systems' Freedom Storage Lightning 9900 is a follow-on to the Freedom Storage 7700E, which Hewlett-Packard (stock: HWP) is currently reselling to its enterprise market on an OEM basis.
The 9900 is a strong performer, but doubts remain whether or not Hitachi Data Systems has the resources needed to market it properly. However, HP can be expected to OEM the unit from Hitachi Data Systems as soon as one month from now, industry observers said.
The 9900 offers several new technologies that enhance performance, said Don McNicoll, director of product marketing at Hitachi Data Systems.
Instead of the 7700E's shared-bus architecture, the 9900 uses crossbar technology to offer bandwidth of up to 6.4 Gbytes per second, compared to 744 Mbytes per second for the freedom 7700, McNicoll said. It also offers non-blocking switching, which reduces internal network data collision to increase performance.
As a result of these two technologies, the 9900 allows full scalability without a decrease in performance, said McNicoll.
"We will be able to grow it and not slow it," he said.
Meanwhile, on the back end of the 9900 are 32 Fibre Channel arbitrated loops, allowing connection to up to 96 hard disks per frame. Up to six frames can be connected to a controller unit for a maximum of 512 hard disks.
The array connects to the network via a Fibre Channel or ESCON connector. Management features include dynamic allocation of capacity and RAID level, and the capability to make remote copies of data without dragging down performance, said McNicoll.
The 9900 is expected to start shipping on July 1, with volume shipments starting by early September. The 9900 will be available direct to Hitachi Data Systems' highest solution provider partners, said Philip Townsend, director of market development and channel marketing for the company's Enterprise Product and Solutions Group. Regional partners will have access via Hitachi Data Systems distributors, he said.
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